On-page Optimization - Is an A grade absolutely necessary?
-
It is commonly stated that three exact keyword mentions on a page is best practice for SEO. Recently, however, I have noticed a few articles that have hinted against it. matt @highonseo briefly mentioned the subject here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/going-beyond-moz-metrics-to-answer-why-is-this-site-outranking-me
Also, one our clients competitors is ranking above them with only one exact mention of the keyword in the page title with no exact mentions in page copy. I know other factors can make a difference, but this is does raise questions of our on-site strategy.
I haven’t found any literature that specifically recommends using one exact match of a keyword, so any opinion would be very useful!
Thanks
-
I think that the page titles, URLS, and H1 tags are best for exact keyword placements. Using them in the page copy can often look out of place.
For example, your keyword might be “Car Repair London”. Inserting this as an exact form into the page copy could read something like “With 30 years of experience, our Car Repair London”.
Google is looking for user experience at the end of the day. What are your thoughts on making the page look as natural as possible?
@James Scaggs Do you have an example of this tactic?
Thanks
-
It is still an SEO best practice to use the exact match keyword on your page.
What Matt is talking about in the article is keyword stuffing, which is overusing a keyword on a page in an unnatural way, which can get you penalized. Including 2-3 mentions of your keyword on your page will help not hurt you and can help increase the relevance of the page in Google's eyes.
-
I recommend targeting themes of keywords rather than one exact match keyword. I typically choose the top 2-3 keywords per theme to target based on highest search volume and lowest competition.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate Page content | What to do?
Hello Guys, I have some duplicate pages detected by MOZ. Most of the URL´s are from a registracion process for users, so the URL´s are all like this: www.exemple.com/user/login?destination=node/125%23comment-form What should I do? Add this to robot txt? If so how? Whats the command to add in Google Webmaster? Thanks in advance! Pedro Pereira
On-Page Optimization | | Kalitenko20140 -
Keywords to optimize
In the menu there's an item with a submenu with 4 items (pages) and another item with a submenu with almost the same pages with a litle bit different content. The problem is that one keyword can be applied and must be applied to the similar pages (the topic is very similar). I guess the number of keywords that we optimize is also important too. Optimizing minimun 8 keywords seems to me very hard. I' was told to optimize for a very low number of keywords but then we have the problem of redundancy. What should I do? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Is reported duplication on the pages or their canonical pages?
There are several sections getting flagged for duplication on one of our sites: http://mysite.com/section-1/?something=X&confirmed=true
On-Page Optimization | | Safelincs
http://mysite.com/section-2/?something=X&confirmed=true
http://mysite.com/section-3/?something=X&confirmed=true Each of the above are showing as having duplicates of the other sections. Indeed, these pages are exactly the same (it's just an SMS confirmation page you enter your code in), however, they all have canonical links back to the section (without the query string), i.e. section-1, section-2 and section-3 respectively. These three sections have unique content and aren't flagged up for duplications themselves, so my questions are: Are the pages with the query strings the duplicates, and if so why are the canonical links being ignored? or Are the canonical pages without the query strings the duplicates, and if so why don't they appear as URLs in their own right in the duplicate content report? I am guessing it's the former, but I can't figure out why it would ignore the canonical links. Any ideas? Thanks0 -
Page Title
My website was hacked last November and then again last week. Prior to the hacking we were at number one in Google.co.uk for our main search term "nile cruises' for years. After last November's hacking we dropped to about position 4 and after last week we are at position 7. Ima rebuilding the lost data and I am having to create new Title and Description meta data for each of the indexed pages. I am taking the opportunity to try and ensure my titles and descriptions are good and the correct length, etc but wondered about the best title format. I set our home page title over the weekend as: Nile Cruise | Leading ABTA & ATOL Bonded UK Nile Cruise Specialist I was going to try and cover 3 keyphrases in the title like this: Nile Cruise | Nile Cruises | Nile Cruise Bargains But I thought that might look a bit spammy because the 3 phrases are very similar. I wondered what anyone else might suggest? Thanks, Colin
On-Page Optimization | | NileCruises0 -
On page optimisation reports
Hello, How do I configure these reports to check my landing pages, rather than just my home page? Thanks, Bilal
On-Page Optimization | | PLP0 -
Old pages
I have a site where I have 5,000 new products each year, I never waned to deleted the old pages due to links pointing to them and keywords. But I now have 20,000 plus pages, does having that many pages spread out my link juice or does it effect me in any other ways over having a site with 5,000 pages or should I keep not deleting old pages so I dont loose any links? Along with that I currently do not link to my old pages from my site so Im guessing google does not get to them very often if at all, if you agree to still keep them should I link to them somewhere? Because the products are not that simiiar and they do bring added value I dont think canonical would work here
On-Page Optimization | | Dirty0 -
Should one page with markers or six separate pages?
Hi - I'm working on a site that was set up with 6 bios on one page, with markers jumping to each person's name. I was thinking about separating those into 6 different pages, but not sure if that's the right thing to do. Advice about keeping the bios on one page vs splitting them up? (Am I more likely to rank for those peoples' names if I have a unique page, or is the one page url with each different marker in it, just as good?) Ranking well for those names isn't a huge goal of the site, but it would be nice to make the choice that would help with that rank. Thanks for your input Emma
On-Page Optimization | | emmas0 -
Keyword Optimization
I optimized this site filmeonlinenoi.com witch is in romanian for this keyphrase "filme online gratis" , i stuck on page 2, i cant get to the first page! I was, but i fall again to the second page...
On-Page Optimization | | Alexsmenaru0